Why is Nigeria Stopping … for cows?

Mojirade Ojo

21 Jan 2018

What constitutes progress for the country now is industrialising cow-keeping to produce marketable products like milk, cheese, butter, oils, margarine, yoghourt, and other dairy by-products for general consumption. Cows on the move cannot be industrialised.

Every now and then, you come across a herd of cows as you are driving along on the road and you have no choice but to stop. The alternative is to get ready to buy another windshield or even car or even you. With the heightening of the herdsmen’s crisis in Nigeria, it appears it is not only motorists that are stopping now; Nigeria is also stopping… for cows. This means no more progress.

The indifference the government displays towards the people is so much these days I find myself asking again and again if we are indeed running a democracy. I doubt if anyone even knows exactly what we are running now. The other day, the president told the country, ‘no restructuring’, and he expected us to take it. Now, Nigerians are saying they do not want Fulani herdsmen in their midst because of those ones’ murderous activities and the government is making as if it no longer speaks or understands English.

The government’s stance on the Fulani herdsmen is all the more baffling considering the number of otherwise productive, law-abiding casualties it has cost the nation. Speculations have been rife as to why this is so. Many have said it is because the president is himself a Fulani man and so he finds it difficult to call his own people to order. My response to that is that it cannot be true, because then it would completely negate his inaugural declaration on being elected when he said he belonged to nobody; and he belonged to all.

I have also heard it said that the Fulani herdsmen are actually the ‘cow carers’ for other wealthy cow owners such as presidents, emirs, governors, politicians, etc., who are the real owners of the cows. I have said that there is nothing wrong with anyone owning anything in a land of free enterprise. HOWEVER, THERE IS EVERYTHING WRONG WHEN THE ENTIRE POPULACE IS NOW BEING MADE TO PAY, AND SOMETIMES WITH THEIR BLOOD, FOR THE ENTERPRISE OF A FEW PEOPLE, WHEN THERE IS NO NEED FOR IT. That is not only exploitation of those young herdsmen but also exploitation and misuse of the entire country’s resources. It is so lazy and barbaric.

Free enterprise means that an individual engages in a trade willingly after calculating the cost of production versus the profit margin and still finds it beneficial. He then goes into it. Farming is an enterprise that is as old as man; so is stock keeping. However, no one goes into an enterprise and then makes other people pay for the production, gratis, and then some, e.g. their blood. That is not enterprise. That is dictatorship, wickedness, perversion, evil, objectionable behaviour and sinful. Such a one has no right to call on the name of God in any religion.

Whoever owns those cows that these young ‘uns push up and down the West African regional bushes had better get up now and begin to strategise on how to pay for the grass their cows eat to grow. It is simple enough to do; it is called ranching. Ranching is the well-known way of keeping cows within specified borders so that other people’s enterprises are not disturbed by one’s own cow enterprise.

Cows are amoral; therefore, other people’s farms, crops, land, etc., are supposed to be off limits to other people’s cows. But who is to tell them if not the herdsman? If the herdsman himself becomes as amoral as the animals he herds, then the crisis becomes serious indeed as we now do not know where man and animal meet or part…

Most importantly, letting cows loose on people’s farmlands is taking the easy way out. What happens when we run out of farmlands for these cows to devour, do they go to the Atlantic Ocean? If we are busy using our state resources to keep these cows alive, would that also not spell doom for the Nigerian race, seeing that man cannot live by cow alone? Would food shortage not result?

From the general discourse on the subject of cow herding, I have heard what appears to be two reasons why ranching is not the method of choice for the Fulani herdsmen. One is that they are nomads, i.e. natural roamers. They say they have been like that for thousands of years and they cannot now begin to change. To this I say, really?

Every single one of us has had to change and adapt our ways to modern living; which has now included living in houses. Ask anyone, our African ancestors centuries ago had to live up trees because it was safest there. We did not come down from these trees until a few hundreds of years ago. Now, we have so adapted to living in houses we are all asking for the head of IBEDC for not giving us enough electricity to enjoy air conditioners. People adapt to new things as conditions change.

The other reason I have heard is that the northern region has been overtaken by drought. So sorry for that, but again, I am pointing all my five, no, ten fingers at the northern elites who have ruled this country for most of its fifty-something years and have not managed to impact the lives of the poor people for the better. There is no reason on earth why allocations to the states could not have been used to call water out of the ground through enlarged boreholes, communal irrigation, damming, etc., for growing vast grassy areas and arable lands all over the north.

The entire West African sub-region has also adopted a very laid-back attitude to this problem of cow herding. The resources meant for solving socio-economic and political problems of most African nations are used by their leaders to live large lifestyles that are far removed from the people, leaving those ones to wander around, well, like cows, in search of sustenance. The problems we are seeing today are testimonies of the failures of governments along the sub-region in particular.

Now, they even talk of ‘cow routes’ in the sub-region. And I ask, what on earth does that mean? Who mapped out the routes for any cow? Are these routes superimposed on national boundaries? Are we saying that I have to get a passport to go to Ghana but cows do not need to because they have international recognition on these routes? I say that the ‘cow route’ business is nothing but a ruse to cover illegal crossings and activities, hence the murders we are witnessing today.

NIGERIA IS IN SEARCH OF PROGRESS IN ORDER TO EVEN PRETEND TO ENTER THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY ECONOMIC MARKET. YET, WE ARE TODAY BEING ASKED TO STEP BACK INTO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY TO ACCOMMODATE RICH MEN’S HERDS OF COWS AND ALLOW THEM TO NIBBLE OUR FARMS OR BE KILLED. HOW PROGRESSIVE IS THAT?

Herding cows from bush to bush all over the country does not remotely constitute progress. What constitutes progress for the country now is industrialising cow-keeping to produce marketable products like milk, cheese, butter, oils, margarine, yoghourt, and other dairy by-products for general consumption. Cows on the move cannot be industrialised.

My take on this problem is that the entire sub-region needs to adopt a more pragmatic but modern approach that takes into consideration the fact that every facet of the economy is important and needs to grow. The Nigerian president can drive this purpose-driven approach. For now, let’s just say that I am disappointed in the silence he is keeping on the activities of the murderous herdsmen; and it is glaring that the Kogi State governor does not understand the problem either. But that’s a topic for another day, no?